All Creatures Great and Small
by SparxFlame
Summary: Even for an angel, Aziraphale's patience and compassion are almost endless. He can deal with the petty injustices and annoyances that assault anyone conducting day-to-day life on Earth. Threats to his precious books, however? Not so much.


**A/N:** Written for a tumblr prompt: "Maybe write something about why angels don't get along with pigeons~?" I'm not sure exactly why, but this is what happened, although I have a strong feeling it wasn't really what they were looking for. Ah well. Hopefully someone somewhere will enjoy it.

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Theoretically speaking, angels love everything. Saints, sinners, in-betweeners, rich and poor, every animal from the tiny ant to the elephant... all of God's creation. It's their job; or, at least, one of their jobs.

And, actually, in practice as well as theory, most angels love everything.

The reason they manage to do this is not because angels were granted endless love and boundless compassion by their Father when they were created. The average angel has only as much capacity for love as the average human.

It's because, on a day to day basis, very few angels have anything to do with any of God's creation other than their own siblings in Heaven. And, because Heaven is a very big place – so if there's someone you don't like, you can avoid them fairly easily – it's not terribly hard for them to love all their siblings most of the time, along with all the small, cute, fluffy things running around below the clouds.

Of those angels who actually spend most of their time down on Earth, most _loathe_ almost all of it. It's very easy to love things from afar when you're singing hosannas in a comfy white church Above, but when you're down on the ground and there are mosquitoes biting you and rats running in your walls and dogs barking outside and the old man at the grocery store argues with you for ten minutes over whether six pounds fifty and two pounds ten add up to make forty pence or one pounds ten pence change from a ten pound note, it's fairly difficult to keep loving the cat that leaves small dead animals on your front doorstep every morning.

There is one angel in the whole of creation that has managed to keep a permanent post on Earth and has not ended up hating it. This angel goes by the name of Aziraphale, and has, by some miracle, managed to abide by the _love my creations_ commandment to the letter (and occasionally beyond the letter, in the case of a certain demon who, for the sake of his own safety, shall remain nameless).

This, however, is all about to change.

The rock pigeon's scientific name is _Columba livia_. Most people who see them in the street do not know this, and so just call them pigeons. Other people, who have at some point been personally slighted by a pigeon or just like being foul-mouthed, may call them pests, menaces, flying devils or winged rats. Aziraphale, being of the former kind of person, calls them pigeons, and occasionally throws a handful of breadcrumbs to them if there are any left over after feeding the ducks.

Or, at least, he used to. A long time ago. Now, the spare breadcrumbs are left on the shelf until the next time the ducks are waiting to be fed, and any pigeons he comes across are treated with dark glares and the occasional, "Shoo." He's not quite reached the winged rats stage, but it's probably not far off.

No one who knows Aziraphale has been able to work out why he has such a strong and seemingly irrational hatred of the birds. Even his siblings up in heaven are confused by it, because despite the occasional wobble in his moral compass, he has a reputation of being one of the nicest, most faithful angels in the host. Certainly the nicest to spend any time on Earth, which tends to corrupt remarkably quickly.

The only person who knows the truth is a certain demon (the same one mentioned earlier, who shall again remain nameless). And, should anyone ever ask him about it, he will _not_ tell them about a certain afternoon many years ago when he received a call from a hysterical angel saying there was a _thing_ in his shop and he couldn't get it out and it was knocking over all the books and getting feathers and fleas and _leavings _everywhere.

And he also will _not_ direct them to a ruined book Aziraphale still keeps, a rare first-edition Shakespeare print, the middle pages of which are partially obscured by a large white stain that he never managed to get out, even after attempting to miracle it.

All angels, if they spend long enough on God's earth, will find something to hate about it. Aziraphale is no exception to this.


End file.
